Islamabad, Jan. 6: Pakistan today said India had launched a “propaganda offensive”, the accusation coming hours after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggested that Islamabad’s official agencies had backed the Mumbai attackers.

Singh told a meeting of chief ministers in Delhi that the evidence in the November 26-29 strike showed the “support of some official agencies in Pakistan”.

In a statement rejecting the allegation, Pakistan foreign ministry spokesperson Mohammad Sadiq said: “India must refrain from hostile propaganda and must not whip up tensions.” India must also take steps to scale down its offensive military posture, Sadiq added.

The spokesperson said the Pakistan government and state institutions were committed to the war against terror and that Islamabad needed no exhortations from India.

“(The) Indian government is well advised to take careful stock of its own policies and conduct that are contributory to the problems facing South Asia,” the statement read.

The fresh verbal volleys came a day after India handed Pakistan evidence on the Mumbai attacks. The dossier includes the confession of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman, transcripts of conversations the gunmen had with Zarar Shah and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Lashkar-e-Toiba leaders based in Pakistan, and GPS and satellite phone data tracking their journey from Karachi to Mumbai. Islamabad has said it will look into the evidence.

Sadiq rejected Singh’s charges that Pakistan was “using terror as an instrument of state policy” and had harboured militants in the past. Instead of responding positively to Islamabad’s offer of co-operation in the probe, India “had chosen to embark on a propaganda offensive”, he said.

Pakistan is a victim of terrorism and not the sponsor, the spokesperson said. Over 1,500 people had died in suicide attacks and blasts in Pakistan since the military assault on Islamabad’s Red Mosque in July 2007.

Islamabad, he reminded India, was the US’s main ally in the war against terror.